498 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1580.
The lyric church poetry and music began with the “ Kyrie Eleison” and “Christe Eleison,’ which passed from the Greek church into the Latin as a response of the people, especially on the high festivals, and was enlarged into brief poems called (from the refrain) Kirleisen, or Leisen, also Lichen. These enlarged cries for mercy are the first specimens of German hymns sung by the people. The oldest dates from the ninth century, called the “ Leich vom heiligen Petrus,” in three stanzas, the first of which reads thus in English : —
‘*Our Lord delivered power to St. Peter, That he may preserve the man who hopes in Him,
Lord, have mercy upon us! Christ, have mercy upon us!’??
One of the best and most popular of these Leisen, but of much later date, is the Easter hymn, —
“Christ is erstanden von der marter alle, des sul [sollen] wir alle fro sein, Christ sol unser trost sein. Kyrie leyson.’’ 2
Penitential hymns in the vernacular were sung by the Flagellants (the Greisslergesellschaften), who in the middle of the fourteenth century, during a long famine and fearful pestilence (the “ Black Death,” 1348), passed in solemn processions with torches, crosses, and banners, through Germany
1 Wackernagel, II. 22, published the whole hymn from a manuscript in Munich.
2 Wackernagel, II. 43 sq., gives several forms. They were afterwards much enlarged. In a Munich manuscript of the fifteenth phage tt a Latin verse is coupled with the German: —
** Christus surrecit, mala nostra texit, et quos hic dilexit hos ad coelum vexit
Kyrie leyson.”’
§ 82. BEGINNINGS OF EVANGELICAL HYMNODY. 499
and other countries, calling upon the people to repent and to prepare for the judgment to come.!
Some of the best Latin hymns, as the “Te Deum,” the ἐς Gloria in excelsis,” the ‘“ Pange lingua,” the “ Veni Creator Spiritus,” the “ Ave Maria,” the “Stabat mater,” the ““ Lauda, Sion, Salvatorem,” St. Bernard’s “Jesu dulcis memoria,” and “Salve caput cruentatum,” were repeatedly translated long before the Reformation. Sometimes the words of the original were curiously mixed with the vernacular, as in the Christmas hymn, —
*€ In dulci jubilo Nun singet und seit fro! Unsres Herzens Wonne Leit in presepio Und leuchtet wie die Sonne
In matris gremio Alpha es et O.”’2
A Benedictine monk, John of Salzburg, prepared a number of translations from the Latin at the request of his archbishop, Pilgrim, in 1366, and was rewarded by him with a parish.®
The “ Minnesanger” of the thirteenth century — among whom Gottfried of Strassburg and Walther von der Vogelweide are the most eminent —glorified love, mingling the earthly and heavenly, the sexual and spiritual, after the model of Solomon’s Song. The Virgin Mary was to them the type of pure, ideal womanhood. Walther cannot find epithets enough for her praise.
The mystic school of Tauler in the fourteenth century produced a few hymns full of glowing love to God. Tauler is the author of the Christmas poem, —
“Uns kommt ein Schiff geladen,”’
1 See specimens in Koch, I. 194 sq., and in Wackernagel, II. 333 sqq.
2 Several forms in Wackernagel, II. 483-486.
8 Wackernagel (II. 409 sqq.) gives forty-three of his hymns from several manuscripts in the libraries at Munich and Vienna.
500 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1617 To 1530.
and of hymns of love to God, one of which begins, ~
** Ich muss die Creaturen fliehen Und suchen Herzensinnigkeit, Soll ich den Geist zu Gotte ziehen, Auf dass er bleib in Reinigkeit.”? 1
The “ Meistersanger” of the fifteenth century were, like the “ Minnesanger,” fruitful in hymns to the ae Mary. ΠΕ of them begins, —
“ὁ Maria zart von edler Art Ein Ros ohn alle Dornen.”
From the middle ages have come down also some of the best tunes, secular and religious.?
The German hymnody of the middle ages, like the Latin, overflows with hagiolatry and Mariolatry. Mary is even clothed with divine attributes, and virtually put in the place of Christ, or of the Holy Spirit, as the fountain of all grace. The most pathetic of Latin hymns, the “Stabat mater dolorosa,” which describes with overpowering effect the piercing agony of Mary at the cross, and the burning desire of being identified with her in sympathy, is disfigured by Mariolatry, and therefore unfit for evangelical worship without some omissions or changes. The great and good Bonaventura, who wrote the Passion hymn, “ Recordare: sanctz crucis,” applied the whole Psalter to the Virgin in his *“ Psalterium B. Marie,” or Marian Psalter, where the name of Mary is substituted for that of the Lord. It was also translated into German, and repeatedly printed.’
1 Wackernagel, II. 802 sqq.; Koch, I. 191.
2 Meister and Baumker, in the Katholische deutsche Kirchenlied in seinen Singweisen, give a collection of these Catholic tunes, partly from unpublished manuscript sources. They acknowledge, however, the great merit of the Protestant hymnologists who have done the pioneer work in medieval church poetry and music, especially Winterfeld and Wackernagel.
_ 8 Wackernagel, in his Bibliogr., Ὁ. 454 sqq., gives extracts from an edition printed at Nurnberg, 1521.